Ya seems reliability can be hit or miss once you get up in miles when adding boost. It seems from the research I have been doing that an s/c would be less trouble in the long run but that doesn't say much. The biggest thing I see which worries me is all the bushing and brace replacement like you said he is having. Research is showing me that they have a service life of 45k miles on a lot of those things. That isn't very long at all considering most people probably never changed them and **** goes down hill fast if you let the small stuff get away from you.

How's the ride and comfort of your buddies car? it seems unless I want to spend either a lot buying a low mile well taken care of car or spend a lot doing tons of replacing of parts I am asking for trouble. Starting to think as much fun as this sounds like it would be I might be better served with looking at something else if I even decide to get out of the subaru(which is a hard decision to make because the fozzy is one of the best cars I have owned).